Designers take whimsical approach to new play

Wayne Ogle

The theatre department’s new production, “Scapin,” is filled with several designers’ hard work and talent.

The comedy, by Moliere, tells the story of Scapin, servant to the household of Geronte. He promises to help the love lives of his neighbor’s son, Octave, and  Leander, Geronte’s son, according to the theatre department’s website.

Both young men are madly in love with damsels in distress and need money to help solve their predicaments.

Scapin recruits Sylvestre, Octave’s servant, to help him with his mission to woo the ladies for Octave and Leander.

Wayne Ogle, junior design and production major, is the lighting designer for the show.

“From the designer production standpoint, we’ve been working on the show since the end of fall with everybody on board, and from a rehearsal standpoint, we’ve been in rehearsal since the beginning of winter quarter,” Ogle said.

Sariina Eschels, senior design and production major, is the costume designer for “Scapin.”

Eschels said the first thing she did was read the script once and then reread it over and over again, looking for many different things.

In the script, there can be specific directions for costumes based on dialogue or stage directions. For example, the stage directions might say a character is wearing a dress, or a character takes another character’s jacket, Eschels said.

“We built a lot of the costumes, or we adapted them,” Eschels said. “We build 80 percent of the costumes for the shows that we do here in the costume shop and the rest was purchasing and pulling from the stock we have here.”

For the lighting designer, the beginning process is more paperwork than actually working with the fixtures, Ogle said.

A lot of that work is pre-design, talking with the other designers, figuring out what everyone’s color pallet is and working out what will complement each other.

“A lot of my work goes into creating a light plot, where we show how the fixtures are placed on the set and creating cue sheets showing the stage manager where the cues are being called,” Ogle said.

The process is different for set design as well, said scenic designer Tiffani Johnson, senior design and production major.

The first step is reading the script and seeing how much the scenery changes, Johnson said. Another step is rendering, which is drawing out what the set will look like from the audience’s perspective, so the director knows what they are going to see.

“I had to make a floor plan, so the stage managers could tape out the set so the actors, as well as the director and everyone else, know where things are placed,” Johnson said. “And then I had to make a detailed drawing of [how]  it’s all supposed to appear to the audience so the technical director can decide how it would be built. The drafting took the longest, especially since I did everything by  hand.”

Johnson said the craziest thing of the whole process was seeing the drawing come to life.

The challenge involving costumes was figuring out what to make, since this story is not set in the real world.

The inspiration ended up coming from cartoons, Eschels said.

“If you watch Dexter’s Laboratory, his mother is in a dress and heels. She’s not wearing what a modern-day housewife would wear; she’s wearing something that was from like the 60s or earlier,” Eschels said.

Scott Robinson, chair of the theatre department, said he thinks the lighter side of theatre is anjoyable.

“I think it’s fun for people to come see something that is light-hearted entertainment,” Robinson said. “This is one of those things that’s just meant to be entertainment.”